Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Ctrl-Alt-Del => Topic started by: FatBloke on 18 February, 2009, 02:32:38 pm
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In an attempt so avoid having to buy MS Office for my daughter's laptop as the poor dear has been struggling with Microshaft Works for the past year or so :-\
So, I downloaded Open Office only to find that it can't open Microshaft Works .wps files.
Open Office is poo!
Unless, dear reader, you have any advice. :-\
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I think you'll find that Works is poo, not openoffice.
Hope that helps.
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Yup - I can't really see anyone making much of an effort to support Works. I thought it had been dead for years.
...and was a total pile of crap when it was available.
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I think you'll find that Works is poo, not openoffice.
I was fully aware of that, hence the move to OO.
Looks like I'll be uninstalling OO and popping down to PCWorld with me credit card! >:(
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I think you'll find that Works is poo, not openoffice.
I was fully aware of that, hence the move to OO.
Looks like I'll be uninstalling OO and popping down to PCWorld with me credit card! >:(
As she is a Stoooodent, she should be able to get the Student and Teacher edition of Office which is cheaper and has lots of stoodenty type software thrown in.
Check otu details online before you go...
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Can you send the Works file to someone with Office who could import & save it as an Office file (.xls, .doc or whatever)? You could then open the Office file with Open Office.
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I goggled for "Microsoft Works .wps"
and apparently there is a free online conversion service for these files to odt
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Could you save your works files as .DOCs .XLTs etc, then open them in OO?
Just a thought, and possibly a bit time consuming. No idea if would work.
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Or get Go-OO: Your Office Suite (http://go-oo.org/)
Its an improved / patched version of OpenOffice, and includes support for importing MS Works files (plus quite a few other extra features).
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From Expert-Sexchange: "For wps text files which you specified in the title, this from FILExt - The File Extension Source - Some versions of Word will open some versions of these Works files; for others a converter may be needed. One is available as the file WP6RTF.EXE from Microsoft. Go to the Microsoft Office main site and search using the words "works to word converter" (without the quotes) and various locations for older converters no longer available should pop up. Once you convert to doc, Open Office should be able to open them, otherwise save them as text files (txt) with works. Then anything will open them."
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If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.
If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them. Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.
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If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.
If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them. Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.
MS Office it will have to be. >:(
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If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.
If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them. Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.
MS Office it will have to be. >:(
yellow-ceitidh uses OO for all her skoolwurk and doesn't get any stick from her teachers (and most of them use MS Office).
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As a proof reader/editor, I find OO a bit clunkier than Word, but I look at the price tag and smile...
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I open MS files via Ubuntu Linux, and the Open Office Programme and save them as Open Office files.
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If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.
If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them. Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.
Er surely the same is true of any differing installs of MS Office. If it is a different version or the fonts are different or the phases of the moon are different then the layout gets screwed up.
OO doesn't seem any better or worse for this
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Even office struggles with Works files :p
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I would go for OO these days
However - if you must have ms, then home/student edition can be had for £60 which buys you the right to install on up to 3 machines - which is not bad.
Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition (3 User Licence) (PC): Microsoft: Amazon.co.uk: Software (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Office-2007-Student-Licence/dp/B000HCZ8EO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1234983332&sr=1-1)
Or there are student only versions available at around £40 for 2 pc's
Software4Students.co.uk: Microsoft Office 2007 Standard edition, microsoft software
(http://www.software4students.co.uk/Microsoft_Office_Standard_2007-details.aspx)
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Er surely the same is true of any differing installs of MS Office. If it is a different version or the fonts are different or the phases of the moon are different then the layout gets screwed up.
This used to be the case, I haven't noticed it for a number of years now. Microsoft have got pretty good at compatability packs.
I haven't used OO in a while (a year or so), but it utterly hosed a big Word document that I tested it with. To be fair, most of the word stuff was OK. Power point was hopeless. The lack of bomb proof VBA makes Excel a bit useless as well.
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Mac or Windows?
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Works is just a way to get Word, with a load of crap thrown in.
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OO Can be made to save files as .doc/.xls etc by default which does help when transferring files to PCs with MS Office on :thumbsup:
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If all of her friends and teachers use OO, then it will be fine.
If they use office, then they will see random formatting errors on some documents when they read them. Eventually she will get bored of getting told off for screwing up her tables, and beg you to buy a student copy of office.
Random formating errors are part and parcel of MS Office's normal modus operandi anyway (e.g. documents on-screen will format/paginate differently depending on which printer drivers you have installed). granted that with OO, they will also see some additional ones that are the result of MS's lack of documentation for their proprietary formats.
If people care about the layout and formatting they need to use a proper typesetting engine and an output format that preserves layout (DVI, PS, PDF etc.)
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Stick with OpenOffice. I'm convinced that, 5 or 10 years from now, OpenOffice will be the standard, and you won't dare email anyone files generated in MS Office, for fear of the formatting being screwed up... Well, I hope so, anyway, because I hate to see people paying for inferior software because "it's what everyone else uses". ::-)
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No it is not poo, far from it. There has been an ongoing saga with plenty of bribery and corruption by MS of national standards organisations so MS can get it's "open" OOXML file format approved by ISO because the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that closed file formats such as .wps are at the mercy of MS. Whatever you do don't continue with MS crap, OO uses ODF ( an ISO standard) which can be opened by the latest MS Office. OO will do anything MS Office can do and will save, if required in MS formats. I have hundreds of .doc and .xls documents all of which converted to .odf without problems. IBM also do a free office suite ( based on OO ) IBM Lotus Symphony (http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home)
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This is true OOXML is such a crap standard that no one can actually implement it in software because it leaves such much stuff undefined. Microsoft paid people to pack the standards meetings and it is alleged bribed the chairmen to pass the standard. Once the standard had been fast racked all these people melted away and are no longer interested. The EU is looking into this at the moment.
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I confess to not being a fan of OO - leastways the Mac version. Clunky, often cryptic, and inclined to invoke the beachball of death at any moment. That said, it's free and the utilitarianism is probably not going to hinder the occasional letter writer.
I like Office, mostly. It's polished and I've never had formatting issues moving between versions (or platforms). I have no issues with paying for software and if there's one good thing that OO has done it's reduced the price for normal mortals to something close to reasonable. That said, Office 2008 for the Mac is a whole load sucky (Excel without pivot tables and VBA, you may as well take it out the back and shoot it). The version of Office 2007 that the mothership beamed onto my work PC is fine. I even quite like the 'ribbons', the old UI was getting labyrinthine.
That said, for non-work use I like iWork. Pages is a breeze to use (my god, graphics stay where you put them), Numbers is a innovative and intuitive approach to spreadsheets (though it lacks anything like Excel's power to crunch through huge piles of unsavoury data), and Keynote laughs in the face of Powerpoint.
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Never minded Excel. it's just Word I hate with a passion.
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I confess to not being a fan of OO - leastways the Mac version. Clunky, often cryptic, and inclined to invoke the beachball of death at any moment. That said, it's free and the utilitarianism is probably not going to hinder the occasional letter writer.
Well, I can't recommend (yet) that you get iWork 09 either... It's quirky and <sometimes> down right annoying (in Pages you can't do a table with two cells that spans more than 1 page...)
Numbers is just backwards sometimes (in 09 it's a bit better), but as if they did it on purpose to NOT be Excel. Why I paid CHF 99.- for a beta, I'll never know... ::-)
Honestly, I find OOo to be the more stable and able to do what I want. While I have OOo 3 for PowerPC, it's not the greatest..
But have you tried Neo Office? It's Mac only and is a lot more stable than OOo back in the 2.x releases.
I always found NeoOffice to be very crashy too. Perhaps it's me or the versions I tinkered with. I abandoned it for the X11 OO, and then the proper Mac version. Can't say I liked either. My wife insists on Office because she likes what she knows, and it keeps her happy being able to move documents from PC to Mac without issue. Excel 2008, to me, is useless without VBA and pivot tables though, so I'll stick with the PC version.
I'd agree that iWork 09 has its quirks, and like all Apple software seems determinably odd at time (I swear they deliberately skip obvious functions and features). For home use, it fits the bill. For horrid work, I stick with Office.
And apologies to pcolbeck, I just remembered the entire dictionaries of invective I've spat at Word over the years. That's a lot, since I started on Word 2 for the Mac.
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Office 2007 has destroyed the "cant use Open Office as it's UI is different to MS Office and would require retraining all our staff" argument as Office 2007 is radically different to all previous versions of MS Office. I am undecided as yet on whether the new UI is a good or bad thing.
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For a student open office can be better in certain cases. If you have a bit of discipline formatting will be consistent (learn to use the styles) also it is quite good at managing references + bibliography. I have written 2 long dissertations one with word98 and the other with openoffice 1.something. Although openoffice was an unfinished product at the time and looking very clunky, productivity was higher with openoffice. I have seen Word destroying so many big documents that only trust it up to 20 pages. For more than this it will either be indesign or openoffice.
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If you worry about random formatting errors then export as .pdf which means it's already formatted. Job done.
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Office (well, Word and Excel mostly) is an excellent suite of products capable of much. I've written long technical documents in Word with proper use of styles, heading hierarchy, cross references etc and it does it all very well. Similarly, I have used Excel for simple mathematical models (even including complex numbers) and it's done pretty much everything I've asked of it.
However, will a school/college age child use any of these features? I doubt it. Not that OOo lacks them, far from it, but why pay out £££ for stuff that isn't needed? Better to pay out £0.00 and just use the stuff you need.
BTW, I work in a "mixed" environment (Mrs W uses M$O, I use OOo). Normal documents interchange perfectly. More complex stuff (eg mail merges, multi-linked spreadsheets) don't.
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I've written long technical documents in Word with proper use of styles, heading hierarchy, cross references etc and it does it all very well. Similarly, I have used Excel for simple mathematical models (even including complex numbers) and it's done pretty much everything I've asked of it.
You need to teach me how to use word, the beast tend to attack me when I have tight deadlines!
I agree with you on Excel, I have pushed the thing to its limit (60000 lines with lookup + complicated formulae + Pivot tables) and it has never bitten me too hard!!!
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I am undecided as yet on whether the new UI is a good or bad thing.
I hate it. It breaks the CUA model horribly. I'm using Classic Menus (http://www.addintools.com/english/menuoffice/default.htm) but that does not fully resolve things.
I know a lot of people like it, but I can't find anything any more and all my keyboard shortcuts are gone >:(
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Yup - I can't really see anyone making much of an effort to support Works. I thought it had been dead for years.
...and was a total pile of crap when it was available.
WOrks is still going strong. I am after a new laptop and several spec Works (v9) (http://www.microsoft.com/products/Works/default.mspx) as part of the package.
You simply need to think ahead and save in a "Word" format and Open Office will be fine.
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Using Word for a large document requires a head-check.
Orifice 2007 was just weird. What were they trying to do?
Any software that tries to tell me what items I have in my menus depending on what I did most recently calls out for the insertion of the install DVD into the urethra of the interface designer.
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Back to the OP.
I started using Open Office a couple of years ago. It's not the same as MS Office and it took some time to get use to the difference ways that Open Office does some things. However, I really like it. I find it a lot more stable than MS Office (although that may be because I started using Open Office at the same time as I started using Ubuntu). I've used Open Office Writer for my PhD thesis and it's done everything I could have wished for. I've also found the Open Office forums very useful in answer various questions.
Forum #1 (http://www.oooforum.org/forum/index.phtml)
Forum #2 (http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php)
The main issue I have with Open Office is that the graphs in Calc (Open Office version of Excel) are pretty shoddy. Then again you shouldn't really be using either Calc or Excel for graphing stuff because they aren't graphing programs.
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Like all Microshaft crap, Office is just too ruddy invasive. One recent irritation was I started to write a letter on the 5th but have yet to finish it. Every time I open the file to continue the date gets changed by Gatesy.
Note for the future. Get rid of M$ totally by saving my files to Open Office.
Anyway, Ubuntu does all I need and is easy to use.
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The lack of bomb proof VBA makes Excel a bit useless as well.
I have never met bomb proof VBA. It just sucks.
Has OO got it's scripting sorted yet?
.d
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The main issue I have with Open Office is that the graphs in Calc (Open Office version of Excel) are pretty shoddy. Then again you shouldn't really be using either Calc or Excel for graphing stuff because they aren't graphing programs.
It's interesting to hear that, as I also find the graph features of OO inferior to those of Excel. Could you give a bit more detail about the separate graphing programs you're referring to? (You could PM me, if you like, as my question is a bit OT).
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I have never met bomb proof VBA. It just sucks.
Sucks from a coding elegance point of view? Sure. Its date handling sucks too. But for all of that, it is hugely powerful. Some of us have coded demo trading systems in VBA, mainly because the test data was in excel already, and it was the quickest way of proving a point (about 1 day).
Then again you shouldn't really be using either Calc or Excel for graphing stuff because they aren't graphing programs.
If the Calc and Excel graphs work for you, what's the problem? Most graphs are pretty simple things.
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Then again you shouldn't really be using either Calc or Excel for graphing stuff because they aren't graphing programs.
If the Calc and Excel graphs work for you, what's the problem? Most graphs are pretty simple things.
Nothing "wrong" with that. I simply meant that Calc & Excel are spreadsheets and if it's graphs that you want to create then there are better pieces of software avaiable. If it works for you, tho, then that's great. I just know that Calc graphs don't work for me.
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I picked up a legit office 2007 complete edition for £40 as a student. See if you can do similar.
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I picked up a legit office 2007 complete edition for £40 as a student. See if you can do similar.
If you have an academic email address (e.g. ending in "ac.uk") you can get Office 2007 Ultimate for £38.95 from http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx (http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx).
In spite of the cheapness of that deal and because I really hate the new dumber and dumber MS Office interface, I still use OpenOffice (as do 50% of my lecturers). Not had any problems with it.
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The equivalent of 40 quid in Asia represents what some families live on for one month.
Microshaft, as usual, is far too expensive :sick:
We should support Linux for a far better future.
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The equivalent of 40 quid in Asia represents what some families live on for one month.
Microshaft, as usual, is far too expensive :sick:
Riiiight. Are they also responsible for the fact that the computer that's needed to run the software costs considerably more than £40?
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They can get the Computer on monthly payments. But let's face it, there is a lot more to a Computer than a bit of software.
And Ubuntu is free and also the software is free. Why pay 40 quid when the latest Ubuntu Desktop is so easy to use and relatively ( perhaps totally) free of bugs and visuses.
In my view Microshaft have been screwing people for far too long :demon: and we all fell for it ::-)
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And Ubuntu is free and also the software is free. Why pay 40 quid when the latest Ubuntu Desktop is so easy to use and relatively ( perhaps totally) free of bugs and visuses.
They had an article in PC Pro a little while ago about a bloke who was only going to use Ubuntu for a week. The first day was spent getting it to work and the third day he broke and switched back to windows because the system was not stable enough for him to have confidence that his work would not be lost!
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And Ubuntu is free and also the software is free. Why pay 40 quid when the latest Ubuntu Desktop is so easy to use and relatively ( perhaps totally) free of bugs and visuses.
Ha. Comedy. Keep it coming.
Linux weenie-ism makes a change from boring old boilerplate MS bashing.
P.S. For what it's worth. I'm neither pro- nor anti- Linux/Windows/UNIX or any other operating system (with the exception of HP-UX which is the work of Stan). I write software for UNIX (including Linux) and Windows for my job. I've been running Linux since 1992. I've contributed to various free/oss apps (I even took over maintaining one from Alan Cox) and even had some of my own code in the linux Kernel back in the 1.3 days (it never made it to the 1.4 "stable" branch thankfully). I have both a Linux desktop and a Windows desktop at work. I have a Linux box, a Windows laptop and a MacOS desktop at home. My home Solaris box died (well, it was dying so I took it out the back and shot it).
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They had an article in PC Pro a little while ago about a bloke who was only going to use Ubuntu for a week. The first day was spent getting it to work and the third day he broke and switched back to windows because the system was not stable enough for him to have confidence that his work would not be lost!
Well the guy is clearly an eejit and I am sure the same would happen to him for any change in platform.
Whereas I only "dabbled" in Linux between the years 1995 approx and 2007, when I bought a new computer just over a year ago I went over to Linux full time. How many times has it crashed? 0. How many files have I lost? 0.
I will add that my computer is important to me as it is a tool with which I earn my living. Therefore, I don't tend to mess about.
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PC Pro: Blogs & Analysis: Features: My life with Linux (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/236886/my-life-with-linux.html)
I got the wrong system, it was Fedora that went horribly wrong!
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I agree with ljerams. As computer use becomes more widespread in different parts of the world I think people are going to switch to Linux based systems due to Microsoft's high costs.
Much of the Windows software used in parts of Asia is pirated - I think it was something like 95% of government computers in Vietnam that were running pirated copies of XP. As a result the Viets are now pushing to introduce Linux on all government computers, which will probably have a trickle-down effect across the market. As Windows updates have become more and more 'inclusive' (Genuine Validation or whatever), people are finding their pirated copies no longer work and are switching to Linux. I believe the Finnish government runs Linux on all machines, and the French gendarmerie have also switched to Linux from MS. More and more private users in developing countries will follow suit.
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They had an article in PC Pro a little while ago about a bloke who was only going to use Ubuntu for a week. The first day was spent getting it to work and the third day he broke and switched back to windows
Yes I don't suppose you will see many articles in PC Pro knocking MS, not many mags bite the hand that feeds them.
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They had an article in PC Pro a little while ago about a bloke who was only going to use Ubuntu for a week. The first day was spent getting it to work and the third day he broke and switched back to windows because the system was not stable enough for him to have confidence that his work would not be lost!
Well the guy is clearly an eejit and I am sure the same would happen to him for any change in platform.
I've just scanned over that article and I was correct ;).
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They can get the Computer on monthly payments. But let's face it, there is a lot more to a Computer than a bit of software.
And Ubuntu is free and also the software is free. Why pay 40 quid when the latest Ubuntu Desktop is so easy to use and relatively ( perhaps totally) free of bugs and visuses.
In my view Microshaft have been screwing people for far too long :demon: and we all fell for it ::-)
I think you are muddling up open source and free. Ubuntu (or other Linux distro) and the software you use may be free to you, but ultimately there is a cost. Just because the costs are buried and offset doesn't mean it's all created by the magical and infinitely charitable software fairies.
Microsoft haven't been screwing anyone. People make reasoned purchasing decisions. Yes, their products were highly priced (and they're not the only culprits, hello Adobe) and they are having to get real - £500 for an application may have seemed reasonable when computers cost £5k, not so in 2009. If they want to compete, then they need to price appropriately, and distinguish themselves against lower priced or free products. This is a challenge.
And bug-free. Ho. That's just being silly.
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Microsoft haven't been screwing anyone.
I'm not sure that's entirely true...
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Microsoft haven't been screwing anyone. People make reasoned purchasing decisions.
You obviously haven't tried to buy a PC without Windows installed, or get a refund for the the installed system, the MS tax. Microsoft say they are great innovators, maybe of restrictive business practices, certainly not software, if fact they do all they can to prevent others being innovative and when they want a new product they buy out a company who have already done it. Ignoring the software I can't understand why people are so indifferent to such a corrupt company.
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I for one am glad that systems all come with one make of operating system and office type ap; it makes compatibility very easy!
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Out of the 8 PCs I've bought in 15 years only 2 had OSes installed (Windows both times) but then I don't buy off the shelf PCs.
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Microsoft haven't been screwing anyone. People make reasoned purchasing decisions.
You obviously haven't tried to buy a PC without Windows installed, or get a refund for the the installed system, the MS tax. Microsoft say they are great innovators, maybe of restrictive business practices, certainly not software, if fact they do all they can to prevent others being innovative and when they want a new product they buy out a company who have already done it. Ignoring the software I can't understand why people are so indifferent to such a corrupt company.
Oddly, I have bought several computers with no operating system. And several operating systems without computers. I don't recall it being a particular challenge beyond picking up the phone and asking. No, they tend not to be advertised, but then I can't imagine there's much consumer demand. And yes, you don't get the deals, but I wouldn't expect to.
Microsoft bashing is a bit dull. They're a behemoth with a big market footprint, and they do all the things that big stompy companies do. It's hardly news or evidence of some grand conspiracy.
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I've run Windows with the exception of Vista, Linux in many flavours. Irix on 32 and 64 it architectures. Mac OS 9 and X. We currently run GPFS over 500+ nodes on a quarter of a petabyte filesystem. I have crashed every single system I have had to use in anger.
Windows was shockingly poor till XP. Which is usable. That isn't the same as the apps being sane. The linux desktop is fine but some of the apps lack serious investment. Library hell is the same on both platforms though Windows tries to brush it under the carpet more and pretend it isn't there.
Linux is more DIY, wearing all the plumbing on the outside but usully more stable.
Linux office apps are basic and lack enterprise level scripting/automation. There are some very smart things in them though.
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Oddly, I have bought several computers with no operating system. And several operating systems without computers.
So have I but most computers for home use are bought through the mass market with MS installed. Why not have a choice at point of sale, you will struggle to find a laptop without an OS installed.
Microsoft bashing is a bit dull.
You may think so but others have a social conscience. And MS do not just operate like other large corporations, they are corrupt recently demonstrated by the OOXML saga, that is not normal business practice.
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Windows was shockingly poor till XP.
That's because xp was the first "consumer" M$ OS that wasn't DOS. NT, first launched in the mid 90s IIRC, is a pretty decent OS (and xp is based on NT).
I'm not necessarily defending M$ here, but their OS's backward-compatibility strategy is quite commendable. However, such a strategy did mean that most PC users were forced into using a sub-standard system when a much better one was available from the same company ???.
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Windows was shockingly poor till XP.
That's because xp was the first "consumer" M$ OS that wasn't DOS. NT, first launched in the mid 90s IIRC, is a pretty decent OS (and xp is based on NT).
Win 98?
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Windows was shockingly poor till XP.
That's because xp was the first "consumer" M$ OS that wasn't DOS. NT, first launched in the mid 90s IIRC, is a pretty decent OS (and xp is based on NT).
Win 98?
Don't make me laugh.. 98 was rebadged 95. The user interface for 95 was a pale imitation of Indigo Magic.
NT was flaky as hell, but in a different way to DOS. It was half VMS and the other half was broken. XP fixed NT and got a lot of the user interface (at the application install/management level) right.
Still brain dead though when it comes to background processing.
(Am I biased? I'm writing this on XP on a netbook while sat on a train )
..d
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So have I but most computers for home use are bought through the mass market with MS installed. Why not have a choice at point of sale, you will struggle to find a laptop without an OS installed.
How much consumer demand is there for PCs with no OS? It's a niche. Unsurprisingly, big volume retailers don't tend to sell them. It's hardly sinister. I'd hazard a guess that most users want something familiar, that they can take out of the box and just use. And they want to be able to call the supplier when it breaks.
You may think so but others have a social conscience. And MS do not just operate like other large corporations, they are corrupt recently demonstrated by the OOXML saga, that is not normal business practice.
Woo-wee, they threw their weight around at the ISO. I mean, no other business has ever done that. It's not like they're making cluster bombs or something.
And to be honest OOXML is so profoundly bloated and horrid, it'll probably kill itself off.
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Don't make me laugh.. 98 was rebadged 95. The user interface for 95 was a pale imitation of Indigo Magic.
But it worked and was stable!
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Don't make me laugh.. 98 was rebadged 95. The user interface for 95 was a pale imitation of Indigo Magic.
But it worked and was stable!
No it didn't and no it wasn't, unless you retrict youelf to a few apps and have no interest in a multiuser OS.
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Woo-wee, they threw their weight around at the ISO. I mean, no other business has ever done that. It's not like they're making cluster bombs or something.
We obviously have a different perspective on the facts. I don't think you could have read much of the detail to the ISO saga or the continuing international disruption to standards processing. Microsoft would be better spending its time and considerable wealth developing decent competitive products rather than trying to negate anything it sees as developing competition.
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The simple point is that if Microsoft welcomed and truly encouraged competition by opening themselves, and all of their intellectual property up they'd be 10% of what they are now within 2 years. To do so would be recklessly irresponsible to their shareholders. The same could probably be said of 90% of large corporations.
Of course they're going to buy up competitors and their technology, just like CA, IBM, Oracle, etc do. It's not as if most of the little companies didn't have a mission statement of "Challenge Microsoft and get bought out by them in 3 years time" anyway. They're started by people in the hope that this will happen and they can retire in 3 years.
Standards have nothing to do with it. Market dominance is all that matters. Until MS lose this they can continue to write themselves a nice big healthy cheque ($16bn in income after tax last year) and given that the "Linux is coming" story has been running for over 10 years now they're not particularly worried (although they're good at putting on a very stern face and throwing a few chairs about for show).
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Linux has either forgotten its less IT literate possible user base or just doesn't bother to correct information about itself.
I'm not an IT phobe, while by no means trained I do look after the computers & network at work. I'm happy that with the application of google and enough time I can fix pretty much any problem. Everything runs on either xp or server 2003 and all seems pretty stable.
That said, I love the idea open source and not filling Bill's pockets and use OO and am trying to get in introduced at work. But as soon as I googled installing Linux I saw lots of references to some sort on command line inputs and long series of switches, which might have retro chic. And then you have to install all the bits you might need one by one...
Sorry but even the evil Microsoft wins out on being customer friendly compared to Linux.
(P.S. all the Linux evangalists who criticise when people express similar views to this on Linux forums need to realise they are part of the problem, not the solution)
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Regret you are a little out of date. As I said earlier the recent Ubuntu Desktop (8.04 & 8.10) are just as easy to use as Microshaft. And with dual boot one can open all your Windows files and save them to Open Office.
Incidentally, one would be hard pressed when I last checked to buy a Computer in Bangkok with Windows installed.
As to Microshaft, I fell for their ME OS that was simply a big con and useless. I had at that time to revert back to Windows 98 once I discovered where the problem lay. As to Linux I have had one minor problem in years of post ME use.
That point speaks for itself I believe. ;)
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Standards have nothing to do with it.
Standards have everything to do with it. With closed formats and APIs not ISO recognised or approved open formats it is almost impossible to produce an IT product that is compatible with MS software without their approval, which is anti competitive which is why they were fined last year $1.4 bn by the EU and are now under further investigation. Document formats and Web standards are the obvious ones but there are others. The problem for MS is having tried to block competitors unfairly the quality of the opposition needs to be better and is gaining ground, such as Apache, by far the biggest server and running non MS software, Firefox, now with 20% of the browser market, Open Office is making inroads into Government, Education and SOHO where the realisation that archived documents may well end up being irretrievable because of closed document formats. MS's biggest competitors IBM, Sun and Novell are spending millions developing Open Office for the corporate desktop and then there is the biggest threat of all Google and cloud computing although personally I think they will struggle with that. I am not bashing MS just stating the facts they will probably be a good study case for business schools in the future of how not to retain market share just like the previous giant to fall IBM who thought there was no future for the desktop PC.
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Well said :thumbsup:
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how not to retain market share
eg Vista.
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Standards have nothing to do with it.
Standards have everything to do with it. With closed formats and APIs not ISO recognised or approved open formats it is almost impossible to produce an IT product that is compatible with MS software without their approval, which is anti competitive which is why they were fined last year $1.4 bn by the EU and are now under further investigation. Document formats and Web standards are the obvious ones but there are others. The problem for MS is having tried to block competitors unfairly the quality of the opposition needs to be better and is gaining ground, such as Apache, by far the biggest server and running non MS software, Firefox, now with 20% of the browser market, Open Office is making inroads into Government, Education and SOHO where the realisation that archived documents may well end up being irretrievable because of closed document formats. MS's biggest competitors IBM, Sun and Novell are spending millions developing Open Office for the corporate desktop and then there is the biggest threat of all Google and cloud computing although personally I think they will struggle with that. I am not bashing MS just stating the facts they will probably be a good study case for business schools in the future of how not to retain market share just like the previous giant to fall IBM who thought there was no future for the desktop PC.
So, effectively MS is being anti-competitive by encouraging and handing an advantage to their competition. MS can lever their format through whatever standards body they wish, if the result isn't popular users and organizations will take their business elsewhere. That seems a reasonable outcome, and a good example of how corporate conservatism in one place encourages innovation elsewhere.
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Linux has either forgotten its less IT literate possible user base or just doesn't bother to correct information about itself.
I'm not an IT phobe, while by no means trained I do look after the computers & network at work. I'm happy that with the application of google and enough time I can fix pretty much any problem. Everything runs on either xp or server 2003 and all seems pretty stable.
That said, I love the idea open source and not filling Bill's pockets and use OO and am trying to get in introduced at work. But as soon as I googled installing Linux I saw lots of references to some sort on command line inputs and long series of switches, which might have retro chic. And then you have to install all the bits you might need one by one...
Sorry but even the evil Microsoft wins out on being customer friendly compared to Linux.
(P.S. all the Linux evangalists who criticise when people express similar views to this on Linux forums need to realise they are part of the problem, not the solution)
It's terminal that holds Linux back. You're always a moment away from having to type some arcane and cryptic Unix command. It's 2009, we've had a decade plus of GUI, the command line should remain the preserve of the IT weenies.
MS and Apple have realised this. I doubt most users know there is a command prompt or terminal. That's how it should be (and no editing the registry, please).
Ubuntu and a couple of distros seem cognisant of this - but as, ever, what happened when I couldn't get wireless to work on Ubuntu? Directions to reams of terminal fun. And it was terminal.
And while we are at it, can we all kill the concept of file directories, folders, drives etc. Again, it's 2009, let's stop pretending we're still in a 1970 office. There are far better, more flexible, file management schema that don't rely on cryptic terminology and pretending that there's a filing cabinet hidden under my keyboard. I checked and there isn't.
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I don't think I have ever typed any kind of command line with Ubuntu Desk top since I started using it.
Of course Ubuntu is Debian based. Does that make a difference? I have no idea and can't be bothered to compare it with the other Linux jobbies!.
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Standards have everything to do with it. With closed formats and APIs not ISO recognised or approved open formats it is almost impossible to produce an IT product that is compatible with MS software without their approval, which is anti competitive which is why they were fined last year $1.4 bn by the EU and are now under further investigation.
That wasn't about standards. That started with Novell whinging about how they couldn't compete in the server market because MS wouldn't let them use some of their *private* API calls. It then snowballed into this bizarre thing about releasing a version of Windows without Windows Media Player. Hardly tricky to workaround given that you just need to install Winamp, RealPlayer, Quicktime or whatever else you want.
The current EU investigation is about being able to disable IE and for other browsers to be used. Right now it's possible to use whatever browser you like (all you have to do is install it) and this has absolutely no bearing on standards or document formats either.
The anti-competitive thing is interesting. In any other industry doing something well and capturing top market share is considered good. Keeping your trade secrets and other proprietary information to yourself is fundamental to this. Do it too well, or just have little/crap opposition and you're punished.
In software people get annoyed that one company has cornered the market and tell them to spill the beans (which would, eventually, be cause the downfall of the company) or impose punitive fines which serve no purpose except eat into shareholders1 money, halt any fall in software prices and the make boat loads for the EU (what they did with it I have no idea. Anyone?).
Maybe Microsoft failed by just not being just a little bit crap. Maybe they should have let Lotus carry on flogging SmartSuite and let it keep a 10% market share. I dunno.
Document formats and Web standards are the obvious ones but there are others. The problem for MS is having tried to block competitors unfairly the quality of the opposition needs to be better and is gaining ground, such as Apache, by far the biggest server and running non MS software, Firefox, now with 20% of the browser market,
How exactly are MS "blocking" Apache, Mozilla and the like?
Open Office is making inroads into Government, Education and SOHO where the realisation that archived documents may well end up being irretrievable because of closed document formats. MS's biggest competitors IBM, Sun and Novell are spending millions developing Open Office for the corporate desktop and then there is the biggest threat of all Google and cloud computing although personally I think they will struggle with that.
Word/Excel/etc document formats will never be lost. The majority has already been reverse engineered. I'll bet within 3 years MS will release a free converter from their proprietary format to some open format, but it won't change much because the majority will continue to use the proprietary format, just as they always have. It's much harder to change user behaviour.
Millions is peanuts in this industry. Anyone can bundle up OpenOffice with a few other bits of software to follow the crowd and look like they're doing their part. IBM/Sun/Novell don't really care about OpenOffice because they can't make any real money out of it.
As each day passes MSFT, Novell, Sun and IBM become less competitive with each other. They're all settling for their little (or should I say huge) niches and avoiding conflict where possible. Novell is starting to smell odd. IBM and Sun don't have a viable OS for x86. MSFT isn't interested in Sparc or Power6. Competition means more platforms to support, more software and more problems.
I am not bashing MS just stating the facts they will probably be a good study case for business schools in the future of how not to retain market share just like the previous giant to fall IBM who thought there was no future for the desktop PC.
IBM got out of the hardware game a while back when it spun off the PC/laptop stuff to Lenovo. It kept various bits (AIX boxes, AS/400 and mainframe stuff). But now the company is a partly a software company, but primarily a services and consulting company.
I'd be hard pushed to describe IBM as "fallen" given that it posted strong 2008 financial results (unlike almost every other sector during the beginning of the recession) and had a total revenue greater than that of Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and Google combined.
1. I'm not an MSFT shareholder but I may have some connection to big blue...
[EDIT] I'm not knocking OpenOffice's efforts at all. I use it, plus some other Open tools like OpenProj. But it is never going to take hold whilst MS is around, and forcing MS out is definitely cutting off the nose to spite the face.
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I don't think I have ever typed any kind of command line with Ubuntu Desk top since I started using it.
Of course Ubuntu is Debian based. Does that make a difference?
Not really. They're all GUIs shoved on top of the same core command line based OS.
This does show that Gnome and KDE (the two main competing GUIs) have come along quite a bit in the last few years but I'm guessing that your in a pretty small minority of Linux users that have never had to touch the command line at all.
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The problem for MS is having tried to block competitors unfairly the quality of the opposition needs to be better and is gaining ground, such as Apache, by far the biggest server and running non MS software, Firefox, now with 20% of the browser market,
How exactly are MS "blocking" Apache, Mozilla and the like?
Could have been better worded , read it again.
I'd be hard pushed to describe IBM as "fallen"
I was talking historically, well the 90's
After two consecutive years of reporting losses in excess of $1 billion, on January 19, 1993, IBM announced a US$8.10 billion loss for the 1992 financial year, which was then the largest single-year corporate loss in U.S. history.
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The problem for MS is having tried to block competitors unfairly the quality of the opposition needs to be better and is gaining ground, such as Apache, by far the biggest server and running non MS software, Firefox, now with 20% of the browser market,
How exactly are MS "blocking" Apache, Mozilla and the like?
Could have been better worded , read it again.
Fair enough, my mistake. Still, the point still stands. The competitiveness of Apache and Mozilla is not stifled by lack of open standards as the products of these companies work on open standards. This is the "bundling" issue that the EU seems preoccupied with. Browsers and webserver market share has no effect on the ubiquity of Word.
I'd be hard pushed to describe IBM as "fallen"
I was talking historically, well the 90's
After two consecutive years of reporting losses in excess of $1 billion, on January 19, 1993, IBM announced a US$8.10 billion loss for the 1992 financial year, which was then the largest single-year corporate loss in U.S. history.
1992 wasn't a good year for lots of businesses. Latest results would tend to hint they've turned it around. They made $10.4bn in 2007, up from $9.4bn in 2006 and $7.9bn in 2005.
Who owns the record for the largest single year corporate loss now, and how much was it?
Time Warner managed to lose $54bn in one quarter in 2002. AIG pipped them with $60bn. Again, a single quarter.
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The competitiveness of Apache and Mozilla is not stifled by lack of open standards as the products of these companies work on open standards. This is the "bundling" issue that the EU seems preoccupied with. Browsers and webserver market share has no effect on the ubiquity of Word.
I agree the issue with the bundled browser seems odd but I think MS are trying it on with the EU and they are not the US courts who also found their anti-competitive practices illegal but the courts penalties were so watered down by the govenment to be virtually ineffective, who would kill the golden goose.
My personal view is that there should be international open document formats, it makes sense. Then if anyone wants to create an office suite or any application that handles documents they use that standard, including MS knowing it can be read anywhere by any suitable application The fact MS bought out or killed off just about every other WP application years ago was probably a good thing in standardising document formats but times move on and the demand is now for open document formats and MS was late to the party as ODF was already approved and gaining useage. They used open corruption to committee stuff to get the required votes to fast track the incomplete OOXML standard which has still not been released a year later and may have some patent issues anyway. I think they should have just included ODF into word as another format and kept a low profile but they wanted things their way and got a lot of bad publicity which made more people who were previously unaware or indifferent take notice and see the future problems with storing all their data in closed proprietary formats.
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With regard to Word's ubiquity: Selling Office at £120ish with a PC but £500ish without?
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With regard to Word's ubiquity: Selling Office at £120ish with a PC but £500ish without?
Businesses get massive volume discounts. Home users can buy a legal copy (for non-commercial use) for a fraction of this. Business users can legally install on a home computer on the basis that the person cannnot be in 2 places at once. That's what has driven M$O popularity.
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vi or emacs?
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vi or emacs?
Oi, wash your mouth out! ;D
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vi, emacs is for perves.
Oh, I am a perve, still vi though.
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vi or emacs?
pico
..d
(only joking)
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Until Ubuntu came along ditching Windows at home only seemed like a hypothetical idea.
Now it's seeming like it's just a matter of time. I will go Ubuntu when I replace my laptop. The Windows desktop hardly ever gets used now.
I do use the cli on Ubuntu. I use it for installing stuff sometimes. It's generally quicker to type
sudo apt-get install clamav
than it is to navigate a gui to do the same thing.
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vi
Emacs is good but it's missing a good text editor.
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vi
Emacs is good but it's missing a good text editor.
vi eh. Haven't used that for ooh 18 years. Does it still have the same old intuative interface?
!wq
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vi eh. Haven't used that for ooh 18 years. Does it still have the same old intuative interface?
!wq
Ah, vi - I wonder how much effort it took to make absolutely everything completely counter-intuitive? I hate it.
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xemacs
I find ctrl-x r k and ctrl-x r y particularly useful for editing dual vliw assembly language.
Tempted to write my own mode for it one day.
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<OT>ctrl-k b then ctrl-k k then ctrl-k v sticks in the mind, even though I haven't used it for years. Hey, we could have a "spot the keystrokes" game...</OT>
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:%s/^M$//g (The ^M means Ctrl+V then Ctrl+M)
:%s/^\s*//
:g//d
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Pardon???